Neutron emission from impacted solid LiD samples

Nylon projectiles with 0.1 g to 0.3 g mass, accelerated to velocities of 0.2-1 km/s using a 60 cm long electromagnetic accelerator (railgun), have been impacted upon solid lithium deuteride (LiD) samples of < 10 mm size. Attempts have been made to look for neutrons from such fractured targets using a high efficiency neutron detector assembly consisting of 12 BF3 proportional counters. The output from the BF3 set-up is monitored in several ways to characterize the possible neutron emission from the target. This includes a simple technique of counting the single channel analyser (SCA) output through a dead-time unit to identify bursts of < 100 μs duration. Counting is started after a delay of ∼ 1 ms to avoid the initial interference from the capacitor bank discharge. The signal is also recorded in a storage oscilloscope from the start of projectile acceleration along with a time marker just before the impact. From a number of shots taken with and without the samples, a significant evidence of neutron emission from the LiD samples appears to emerge. The experiments suggest that approximately 100 neutrons might be generated during every such impact in a duration of < 4 ms. (author). 7 refs., 3 figs